The smile vanished from Kolchak’s face. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” answered Farshad. He could feel the old familiar rage brimming up from the center of his chest, into his limbs. He felt duped. “That explosion must have destroyed every cable.”
“And so what if it did?” answered Kolchak. “A de-escalation between Beijing and Washington hardly benefits us. It doesn’t benefit your nation either. Let’s sow a little chaos into this crisis. Let’s see what happens then. The result will be advantageous, for both of our countries. Who knows, then we might—” Before Kolchak could finish the thought, the ship’s collision alarm sounded.
Orders were rapidly shouted across the bridge—a new heading, a new speed (“Reverse right rudder, full ahead left!”), a reflexive set of impact-avoidance measures—while both Kolchak and Farshad scanned off the bow. At first, Farshad couldn’t see the obstacle that threatened collision. There was no ship. No iceberg. No large object that assured catastrophe. There was only clear sky. And a mist of seawater that still lingered in the air after the explosion.
It was the mist that concealed the obstacle.
Sharks, dozens of them, an entire school, bobbing upward like so many apples in a barrel, their white bellies presented to the sun. The evasive maneuvers continued. Farshad could do nothing; a sailor in name only, he couldn’t help the crew avoid the collision. The Rezkiy plowed through the field of dead fish, their bodies hitting the thin hull, reminding Farshad of the ice floes that had so often kept him awake at night—dong, dong, dong. Then a far sharper noise combined with this hollow thudding, a noise like a fistful of metal spoons tossed down a garbage disposal; the shark carcasses were passing through the twin propellers of the Rezkiy.
Farshad followed Kolchak out to the bridge wing. They turned to the stern of the ship to assess the damage. The seawater mist still lingered in the air. The sunlight passed through it, casting off brilliant rainbows—blues, yellows, oranges, reds.
So much red.
Farshad realized the red wasn’t only in the air; it was also in the water. The slightly damaged Rezkiy set a new course, leaving a wide swath of blood in its wake.
* * *
21:02 June 26, 2034 (GMT+8)
300 nautical miles off the coast of Zhanjiang
The internet was out across the entire eastern seaboard. Eighty percent of the connectivity in the Midwest was gone. Connectivity on the West Coast had been reduced by 50 percent.
A nationwide power outage.
The airports closed.
The markets panicked.
Hunt listened to the updates arriving via the BBC World Service on the handheld radio Quint had given her. She immediately understood the implications. She scrambled down four levels to the radio room, where Quint was also listening to the news and awaiting her.
“Anything yet?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
Hooper wasn’t there, he was asleep in the berthing, and Hunt was glad it was only her and the old chief. She knew the message she was waiting for, and she felt as though she wanted the fewest people possible around when it arrived. The idea of receiving her task in front of someone from a younger generation, like Hooper, felt particularly difficult. Perhaps this was because he would have to live with the consequences longer than any of them. This was Hunt’s train of thought as she sat in the cramped radio room with Quint, the two of them listening to static on the HF radio set, waiting.
And then the message arrived.
* * *
10:47 June 26, 2034 (GMT-4)
Washington, D.C.
Chowdhury wasn’t in the room when they made the decision. To assuage his guilt about what followed, he would always cling to that fact. In the years to come he would have ample opportunity to imagine the discussion around the Situation Room conference table beneath the dim generator-powered lights. He would imagine the positions taken by Trent Wisecarver, by the various service chiefs and cabinet secretaries, the tabulations of arguments for or against what they were about to do—what they had all committed themselves to do when the president had put down her “red line” and dared her counterparts in Beijing to cross it.
Which was what it seemed Beijing had now done, though not in the way anyone had anticipated. The cutting of the undersea cables and the resulting plunge into darkness was the demonstrable fact that, when discussed around the conference table, proved Beijing had crossed the red line. The question was the response. And even that was settled in remarkably short order. Chowdhury envisioned the scene—a disquisition of US interests by Wisecarver, followed by a range of options (or lack thereof) presented by the Joint Chiefs, and then formal nuclear authorizations being granted by the president herself. Chowdhury didn’t need to imagine any more than that because he had seen the principals as they exited into the West Wing, their dour expressions failing to contain the knowledge of the decision they had settled upon, even though they themselves didn’t yet understand past intellectualization the destruction they would unleash. How could they?
With the orders dispatched, Wisecarver set up a duty rotation among the national security staff and Chowdhury was sent home, to return the following morning. He expected the strike to occur sometime in the night. There would, of course, be a response from Beijing. And the national security staff needed to be ready for it. On Chowdhury’s drive home, entire blocks were still without power. Only about half the traffic lights in the city worked; the other half were blacked out or shuffling their colors nonsensically onto empty streets. In only a few more days, the trash would begin to pile up. When he tuned in to his favorite radio station he was met with static.
So he drove in silence.
And he thought.
He thought the same thought all through that night—as he ate dinner with his mother and Ashni, as he carried the girl up to bed with her arms looped heavily around his neck like two ropes, and as he wished his mother good night in the guest room and she kissed him, uncharacteristically, on the forehead and then touched his cheek with her cupped palm as she hadn’t done in years, not since his divorce. The thought was this: I have to get my family somewhere safe.
Chowdhury knew where that place was. It wasn’t a bomb shelter (if those even existed anymore), or outside of the city (although that wouldn’t be a bad start). No, he concluded; none of that would be enough.
He knew what he needed to do.
Who he needed to call.
In the quiet of his home, with his mother and daughter sleeping so near he would need to speak in a whisper, he picked up his phone and dialed. The answer came after the first ring.
“Admiral Anand Patel speaking. . . .”
Chowdhury froze. A beat of silence followed.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Hello, Uncle. It’s me, Sandeep.”
* * *
13:36 June 27, 2034 (GMT+8)
300 nautical miles off the coast of Zhanjiang
White light on the horizon.
That’s how Sarah Hunt would always remember it.
* * *
11:15 June 30, 2034 (GMT+8)
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport
Lin Bao believed he had known them, but he hadn’t.
If he had once considered himself half American, he no longer thought so. Not after what they’d done at Zhanjiang three days ago. Every member of his crew knew someone who’d perished there, and almost all had family within the blast zone. Countless friends of his—from his academy days, to postings on other ships, to three cousins who had nothing to do with the Navy but who lived in that port city by the turquoise sea—each gone in an instant, in a flash. Others had not been so lucky. Lin Bao couldn’t bear to linger on the details; they were too gruesome. But he knew the hospitals in Beihai, Maoming, Yangjiang, and even as far away as Shenzhen had already filled to capacity.
If the American strike on Zhanjiang had been swift and decisive, the invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Army had proven its equal—though it wasn’t
Beijing’s response to the 150-kiloton blast; that was yet to come. A discussion of that response was the reason Lin Bao was summoned away from his ship to a conference, so that he was now awaiting the arrival of Minister Chiang in the airport’s international terminal, in what had once been the British Airways first-class lounge. Floor-to-ceiling windows allowed Lin Bao to marvel at his country’s occupation of the island. Though the invasion had shut down the airport to civilian traffic, it was busy—if not busier—with military traffic, commuter jets having been replaced with fighters and transports, and vacationers and business travelers having been replaced with soldiers. When Minister Chiang at last arrived in the lounge, he was followed by a vast retinue of security, which, as he explained apologetically, was the reason for his delay. “They’ve become very protective of me,” he said, and laughed nervously, offering one of his characteristically expansive smiles to his security detail, none of whom returned it.
Minister Chiang escorted Lin Bao into a conference room, a clean glassed-in cube designed for executives to use between flights. The two sat next to each other at one end of a long table. Lin Bao couldn’t help but notice Minister Chiang’s uniform, which wasn’t his usual service dress but rather a set of poorly fitting camouflage utilities that still held the creases from where they’d been folded in plastic packaging. Like Lin Bao, the minister couldn’t help but steal the occasional admiring glance at his troops as they moved efficiently through the airport, dispersing throughout Taipei and then beyond for the seizure and annexation of this stubborn republic, finally brought to heel.
However, when Minister Chiang’s attention returned to the conference room, his expression turned severe, and he began to knead his chin, as if the action were a way to coax his jaw into motion. Eventually, he spoke, “Our position is becoming increasingly precarious. We have a week, maybe two, until the Americans will have massed their fleets so close to our mainland that we’ll no longer possess free access to the sea. Which is unacceptable. If we allow that to happen, the Americans will strangle us as we have done here, to this island. With our access to the sea blocked, our entire mainland will be under threat of invasion, to say nothing of the nuclear threat. The Americans have crossed that threshold. Once a nation has dropped one nuclear weapon the stigma of a second or a third is less. The moment has come for us to settle on a course of action.”
Minister Chiang was speaking imperiously, which caused Lin Bao to hesitate before replying, “Is that the reason for this”—and Lin Bao struggled for a word to describe the nature of their meeting, which was ostensibly why Minister Chiang had summoned him here, away from his ship, to the British Airways lounge, which increasingly felt like a strange, even illicit location—“I mean, the reason for this conference?”
Minister Chiang leaned forward in his chair, placing his hand affectionately on Lin Bao’s forearm. Then he glanced out the window, to his security detail, as if making sure his dark-suited entourage observed the gesture. And Lin Bao saw that they did. Gradually, he began to intuit the subtext for their meeting as Minister Chiang confessed that their “conference” was a “conference of two.” Yes, he could have invited the commander of the special forces task force, an unimaginative major general whose troops had already fanned out across Taipei, seizing strategic targets such as radio, television, and power stations, as well as gathering up probable agitators; and he could have also invited the commander of their air forces, a technocrat who was coordinating a vast logistical web of resupply while keeping his fighter and attack aircraft poised for any counterstrike; but to invite either of them would have disrupted their efforts. Also, Minister Chiang explained that he wasn’t certain they possessed “the required competencies for what would come next.”
Which begged the question of what that next would be.
When Lin Bao asked, Minister Chiang grew uncharacteristically reticent. He crossed his arms over his chest, turned his chin slightly to the side, so that he was observing Lin Bao from the corners of his eyes as if to confirm that he had appraised him correctly from the start.
“It seems I’ve been recalled to Beijing,” said Minister Chiang. He once again glanced outside the glass conference room, to where his security detail lingered. Lin Bao now understood; those men were to ensure the minister returned—whether he wanted to or not. “After what happened three days ago in Zhanjiang,” the minister continued, “certain voices are saying that our planning miscalculated the American response.” He fixed his stare on Lin Bao, examining him for the slightest reaction to such charges of miscalculation. “Those same voices, both inside and outside the Politburo Standing Committee, are blaming me. Intrigue like this is nothing surprising. My enemies see a vulnerability and they strike after it. They claim I’m to blame for the actions of our unreliable allies in the Barents Sea, or for an American president whose greatest weakness is her fear of being perceived as weak. I haven’t come as far as I have without possessing certain instincts that allow me to navigate such intrigues. And it is those instincts that drew me to you, Admiral Lin Bao. It is why I made you Ma Qiang’s replacement, and it is why I am asking for your support now, against not only our enemies on the outside but also our enemies within.”
“My support?” asked Lin Bao.
“Yes, for what comes next.”
But Lin Bao still didn’t know what came next. Perhaps they could hold their gains around Taipei and negotiate with the Americans. The devastation of Zhanjiang would be the price they’d pay to annex Taiwan. He said as much to Minister Chiang, reminding him that their original plan was based on a strategy of de-escalation, as well as Sun Tzu’s wisdom about subduing one’s enemy without fighting.
One of the dark-suited security men knocked on the glass with the knuckle of his middle finger. He pointed to his watch. It was time.
Minister Chiang stood, tugging down on his uniform, which had ridden up his soft belly. With all the dignity he could muster, he raised a finger to the impatient member of his security detail, insisting that he wait another moment. Then he turned to Lin Bao and rested his hand on his shoulder. “Yes, we all know that old bit of Sun Tzu. He was a master of asymmetric warfare, of defeating an enemy without giving battle. But he also tells us, On difficult ground, press on; on encircled ground, devise stratagems—”
The security man swung open the door, interrupting them.
Minister Chiang’s eyes flashed in that direction, but then he fixed them determinedly on Lin Bao. “And on death ground, fight.”
As improbably as he had arrived, Minister Chiang was gone.
5
On Death Ground
02:38 July 01, 2034 (GMT+8)
South China Sea
From the nose cone rearward, his eyes ran the line of the fuselage. He ducked under the flared wings and walked in a crouch to each of their tips, brushing their leading edge with the pads of his four fingers as he checked for a dent, a loose coupling, any compromise in their aerodynamics. He made his way back to the dark, gaping exhaust of the twin engines. He stuck his head inside each afterburner, inhaled deeply, and shut his eyes. God, how he loved that smell: jet fuel. Next, in a single leap, like a house cat assuming its perch on a favorite windowsill, he hoisted himself onto the back of the Hornet. Wedge walked forward to the open cockpit and sat inside. He placed one hand on the inert throttle, the other on the stick, leaned against the headrest, and shut his eyes.
It was the middle of the night and the hangar deck was empty. Wedge had arrived on the Enterprise only a few hours before, after a brief layover in Yokosuka. On the flight in he observed the sun setting with a particular brilliance in the west, in the direction of Zhanjiang. It was the reddest he’d ever seen—red like a wound. He could think of no other way to describe this, his first glimpse of nuclear fallout. Although the strike had only used a tactical nuke, it was a significant escalation and the possibility of a strategic attack was on the rise. The Indians were making noises about trying to negotiate some kind of ceasefire, but that wasn’t g
oing anywhere. Wedge hardly considered himself a strategist, but he knew enough to understand that a single miscalculation on either side could take this whole war high-order nuclear—that meant the big stuff, the end-of-days stuff.
What a goat fuck, Wedge thought to himself.
Followed by, Pop-Pop would’ve loved this.
The jet lag had eventually brought him down to the hangar deck, to check out the aircraft assigned to his new command, VMFA-323, the Death Rattlers. Even without the time change, the excitement of this assignment would have likely kept him up. After the chance meeting at the officers’ club in Miramar with the Death Rattlers’ old colonel, he’d had the idea to call the master sergeant who’d played chaperone to him while he was in Quantico. When Wedge asked whether the air wing had assigned another officer to take over the underequipped and understaffed Death Rattlers, the master sergeant explained that the vacancy was low-priority because the Corps’ unchanged policy was to fill vacancies in its F-35 squadrons, not its antiquated Hornet squadrons. At that point their conversation went the same as nearly all of their conversations before (“Nobody’s in command? Are you shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”). With a few deft strokes of his keyboard and a phone call to a soon-to-retire general, the master sergeant was able to cut Wedge a new set of orders.
How long had he waited for those orders? Really, since he’d been a kid. He had a sense as he sat in the cockpit that his entire life—everything he had ever hoped to be—came down to this assignment. With his eyes shut, he continued to manipulate the Hornet’s controls, juking the stick, stamping the rudder pedals, adding and easing off the throttle, while in his imagination he sequenced through a Split-S, a Low and High Yo-Yo defense, an Immelmann, and High-G Barrel Roll. As a child, he used to make a cockpit out of a cardboard box and wear one of his father’s old flight helmets. He would visualize dogfights, as he did now (Three-quarters throttle. Even rudder . . . closing, closing . . . ), epic battles in which sometimes he was the victor (Full-throttle, break right!), and other times he was blown out of the sky (On your tail! Eject! Eject!) facing impossible odds. But always there was glory.
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